


In Her Orbit

by unfolded73



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Drinking, Established Relationship, F/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-10
Updated: 2010-07-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:01:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21787189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfolded73/pseuds/unfolded73
Summary: Left to his own devices, the Doctor tends toward the maudlin.
Relationships: Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Kudos: 7





	In Her Orbit

**Author's Note:**

> Notes when originally published, July 13, 2010: Despite the fact that the first draft of this fic was not that good, fid_gin persevered and helped whip it into shape, so she deserves a massive thanks.
> 
> Notes today: Making one more push to archive all the stray fics that I never posted here because I saw my word count was approaching 800,000, and it was making me crazy that there are fics I've written that might be lost to the aether.

He swirls his drink, watching the ice cubes melt into the dark liquid. A blue glow from the lighted bar gives the amber whiskey a greenish tinge, and the Doctor swallows the rest of it in one gulp before it gets watered down any further.

It feels as if the drink affects his body instantaneously, overheating him and filling him with a false sense of well-being, and he signals to the barman for another. He’s tried it all now; well, not _all_ – he hasn’t shot up heroin. He imagines his counterpart across the Void shaking his head with disdain, but it isn’t that he’s become a drug _user_. That would be reckless. It’s more of an ongoing experiment to test his human body and his hybrid human/Time Lord mind under a variety of conditions. He tried marijuana once to hilarious effect, based on Rose’s reaction, and amphetamines more than once. He found the resulting sensations – among other things, that he’d never need to sleep again – to be frighteningly seductive, and after the third time he took them without telling Rose, he flushed the rest of the pills down the toilet. 

Tonight isn’t about any experiment, however; he’s already aware of what alcohol does to him. Tonight he was alone and bored, frustrated that Rose went out on a mission without inviting him along. She admitted to him once that after a few years of being considered the foremost alien expert at Torchwood, it’s hard for her to incorporate him and the 900 years of time and space packed inside his brain into her professional life. That doesn’t mean she ignores his input; far from it. But it does mean that sometimes she doesn’t bother to let him know that she’s doing field work until she’s already long gone, and then usually the message she leaves is too vague for him to follow her. He wonders if she’s afraid of putting him in danger. If she thinks that he isn’t going to take proper care of his one, fragile human life.

She’s a smart one, Rose is. His behavior does border on careless occasionally, even he admits it.

A woman brushes up next to him at the bar, wedging herself between his stool and the next one, and orders a glass of wine. She gives the Doctor a wide smile, and as she reaches for her drink, she allows her left breast to press against his shoulder. He isn’t remotely interested in her, and yet a stirring in his trousers indicates that at least one part of him has a different idea. The Doctor frowns into his drink, remembering every uncharitable remark he’s ever made about the human libido. When he doesn’t return her flirtations, the woman fades back into the din of the crowd behind him.

He’s exchanged his usual suit (although in reality, it’s suits, plural – one of the many he’s had tailored) for jeans and a T-shirt tonight. The change is enough that he’s likely to go unnoticed by any photographers interested in the Vitex heiress’ boyfriend. Not that there are many of those; there was intense interest in Rose when she first appeared on the scene as Pete Tyler’s secret daughter, but it waned quickly when she never did any of the things that heiresses make names for themselves by doing. There was a similar blip when Rose began being seen everywhere with “her mysterious doctor,” but tabloid fame has been, fortunately for him, fleeting.

He wobbles slightly when he stands up from the bar, leaving what is certainly too much money and walking out into the night. It is damp and chilly, and the hairs on his arms stand up as he hurries back to their flat. He darts across the street just before a car crosses his path, and it honks its displeasure at him. As he often does in moments like this when he’s done something stupid, he sees the Time Lord in his mind’s eye, rolling his eyes. For him, the original Doctor exists like a lurking presence in the back of his mind, there to scold him and otherwise make him feel small and useless for his failings. He knows it’s only his imagination, but it doesn’t make it feel any less real. Lately, he’s started imagining his counterpart with a different, if indistinct, face. He wonders if it’s a form of clairvoyance, a sign that the other Doctor has regenerated, or if he’s just more comfortable imagining them no longer twins of each other. He supposes he’ll never know. 

The flat is dark and empty when he unlocks the door and pushes his way in; Rose is still out. He checks his mobile for any texts he might have missed in the noisy pub, but there are none, and his heart seizes with worry. He shakes his head. _She’s fine. Nothing to worry about. She’s fine,_ he tells himself. Still, he can’t help the morbid imaginings that steal upon him in moments like these. It terrifies him, how much he depends on Rose now. Without her, he isn’t sure who he’d be.

He drops his jeans by the door of the bedroom and tosses his T-shirt at the hamper before collapsing on top of the duvet. He looks down the length of his body from where his head is propped on one of Rose’s decorative pillows; his pale abdomen, with a trail of dark hair disappearing beneath pants that Rose picked out, skinny legs that are just slightly too long for their bed, and hairy toes. Not exactly the human ideal for male attractiveness, he’s surmised, but Rose has assured him that his body is exactly what she wants, and all he can do is believe her. Alcohol drags him down into restless sleep, and the next thing he is aware of is the woman herself, on hands and knees above him, wet hair dripping on his shoulders. She is fresh from a shower, wearing only a clean pair of knickers. He focuses on her breasts, then looks up at her face to see her smiling at him.

“Hello.”

“Hello. It wasn’t aliens,” Rose says. “Well, it might’ve been aliens, but not any time recently. I’ve got a van full of artifacts that you’re going to want to have a look at in the morning.”

“Okay,” he says, eyes still roaming over her body. He’s sure he’ll be interested in alien artifacts tomorrow.

Rose sits down on him, smiling as she no doubt feels the way his cock has begun to rise to attention at the sight and smell of her. She rocks her hips against him. “We had to drive two hours into the countryside; that’s why it took so long.”

“You must be tired.”

“Not really,” she says, punctuating the words with a slow grind that makes him groan and reach out to grasp her hips. “Do you wanna have sex?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” he asks.

She stands up to take off her knickers. “Yeah, just being polite,” she says with a cheeky grin as she reaches out to help him off with his pants. He gasps when Rose darts forward and takes his cock into her mouth, working him until he is fully hard, and then she straddles him again, reaching down with a hand to guide him inside her. The Doctor’s eyes fall closed and his hips rise as he seeks more more more never enough—

“Missed you tonight,” Rose breathes as she moves with him. And he could point out she was the one who left without asking him to join her, but he doesn’t, and he won’t. She thinks she needs distance sometimes to keep from being subsumed into his orbit, the way things used to be when she was Companion and he was Everything, and doesn’t she see that now he is the planet to her sun?

“I missed you too,” he says, and wants to say more: that he loves her, needs her, that he’s frightened of how much he needs her, that he hates himself a little for needing her. Rose throws her head back as she rides him, tendrils of damp hair brushing her shoulders, her own hand snaking down between her legs. When she comes, she stifles a shout and it emerges from her mouth as an almost-squeak. Her rhythm falters and the Doctor bends his knees, seeking purchase on the soft sheets, lifting his hips again and again and again and then he cries out too, his eyes squeezing shut against the unbearable pleasure of it.

He whimpers as Rose lifts off of him a few moments later, his flesh overly sensitive to friction and the sudden change in temperature. The Doctor realises that they are still on top of the duvet, and he scrambles to get under while Rose goes to the loo. He is already dozing when she returns, curling into him and kissing his neck. 

“So what did you do tonight?” she whispers.

“Nothing good.” He wraps an arm around her, enjoying the softness of her hair against his chest. “I worry about you.”

He feels Rose tilt her head to look at him. “It was artifact retrieval, perfectly safe.”

“It isn’t always.”

“I know.”

He detaches himself from her so that he can see her eyes in the dim bedroom. “Rose, if I lost you... I’ve got nothing else.”

She pauses for a beat before answering. “First of all, you’re wrong about that. You have family and friends and a job and hobbies, and I know those aren’t the things you’re used to having, I know they’re silly, human things, but you have them. And second, you aren’t the first person in the history of the universe to feel dependent on the person you’re in love with. It comes with the territory.”

“I don’t like it,” he admits, looking up at the ceiling..

“Well, we should break up then,” Rose says, and he meets her eyes to see her grinning at him. “No? Would that not be a good plan?”

He pulls her back against his chest, tickling her side briefly as punishment. Rose squirms and giggles, and he takes a moment to just savour the feel of her warm skin all along the length of his own, and to marvel at the comfort he finds in this simple physical intimacy.

“I _am_ , you know. In love with you,” he says after a few minutes of silence.

“I know,” Rose murmurs sleepily, and she kisses his chest, over his heart.


End file.
